Battleground: deer, water, bones

My bones hurt.  I'm on edge.  I leave the room because the noise of the TV stirs my stomach.  The other day I was close to crying just driving down the road.  I’ve wondered about arthritis and fibromyalgia, but even more so I’ve considered these aches to evidence the throes of spiritual battle.  Certainly the story of Job shows that faith can lead us to encounter physical pain.  Now in recent weeks I have called on the Lord to carry me through.  And then came last Sunday.  I simply walked into church and heard 3 particular words.  Deer.  Water.  Bones.  Each spoke uniquely to me.  Our pastor talked of his trip to Montana and his view of some deer walking up to the water.  That water, he said, was a fountain of life for these animals.  That water led to a whole experience of replenishment.  Much more than a short sip of anything wet, that water nourished the depth of the animal’s whole existence.  Yet when the pastor initially uttered deer and water in the same sentence, my brain froze because I first thought of a song.  I'd been rehearsing some music with a friend, and one set of our lyrics sings, “As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after Thee.”  Our road to rehearsing this music had encountered a very steep uphill climb.  It was a battle, it had been painful, pressure was tight, and so this Sunday in church my ears stood desperately attentive.  Next came the pastor saying, “The Lord can be health to our bones.”  And therein sat my third word.  God was using the pastor to speak into the aches of my body that felt more loudly pronounced every day.  All morning I kept hearing people speak words and ideas that I identified with.  River.  Thirst.  Running water that flows even where the land is parched.  With each new mention, I felt refreshed and immensely loved by the Lord that He would speak so specifically into my circumstances and let me know He knew what I was enduring and that He was with me.  This pain I withstood was of a different realm.  A different category.  People tell me I have a high tolerance for pain, yet my usual large doses of ibuprofen wouldn’t touch this.  The tension began to cleanse through my eyes, saturating one Kleenex after another to realize how each new conversation added into the blessing.  Jesus says in John 7:38, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”  This was my real life and my real streams of tears flowing.  And by the time I heard my Spanish friend say the word alfarero, which only a couple days prior I had learned means “potter,” I could picture the Lord molding me at the potter’s wheel, moistening the clay along the way to stretch, reshape, and smooth out my edges.  And as my tears released, my fragility faded.  Though the pain would return later in the week, this Sunday the Lord had relieved and replenished to the depths of my soul.  Where I had struggled for words to explain to my husband, the Lord had reassured that He knew all the ins and outs of every inch of my pain.  Satan could fight all he wanted, but the Lord had given me rest and had held up the fight on my behalf.  To know Him in these moments was sufficient for me.  The Lord is enough.